Investing in the future: Our new carcass furniture assembly line
We’ve made it our aim always to be at the cutting edge of technology. The launch of our new carcass furniture production line is the next great step on the road to the furniture manufacturing of the future, as the most recent issue of the ‘möbelfer-tigung’ trade journal expressed it in a detailed article www.moebelfertigung.com/news/24804.
The new carcass furniture assembly line: A host of innovations
The new carcass furniture assembly line is intended to largely replace the existing production lines by the end of the year at the latest. To date we have been producing each type of cupboard on its own assembly line. Four presses were in use at different production stages.
Our new, almost fully automatic production line from Priess & Horstmann now enables us to produce one cupboard a minute. A considerable increase on the production rate to date.
The flexibility of the new facility offers substantial advantages. The plant produces various cupboards with louvres, double doors or sliding doors on the ‘batch size 1’ principle. A carcass press, which assembles various types of cupboards with ease, forms the heart of the production line. With this unique carcass furniture assembly line, we’re setting new standards in office furniture manufacturing. We have also been able to achieve improvements in protecting and shipping the cupboard parts: by reducing manual transport, the parts are protected and damage is reduced. In addition, the plant enables cyclical ‘just in time’ manufacture of the cupboards.
The assembly line can get by with fewer manual work stations, one of which supports of the operator with an innovative ‘on-panel’ visualisation system – another novelty in furniture manufacturing. A camera system measures the cupboard part, records its position on the mounting surface, and automatically projects an image of the matching fitting via a data projector onto the place where it is to be fitted. In all, seven or eight staff work on the new line.
The overall strategy: Milestones pointing to the future
So that we can live up to our claim to be technological leaders in the industry, we’ve planned further steps in the coming years to develop our competencies and set new standards. After already making IT a key topic in recent years, we’re currently looking into data management. We’re implementing a project in which the data are sent from the specialist dealer to us at the office automatically. In this way we minimise sources of error, and the dealer receives a confirmation of the order directly. In addition, we’re aiming to further improve the traceability of materials by using barcodes at the factory.
Over the coming years, expansion and rebuilding measures are being planned and implemented at various sites on the factory premises. Existing areas can be used still more efficiently if we put our processes to the test. In this way we can create more space for productive production facilities, including optimisation of table assembly lines.
One thing’s sure: by the time the planned new milestones are in place, our new carcass assembly line will already have produced a vast number of cupboards and storage space systems.